Kant and Mysticism

Stephen R. Palmquist is professor of religion and philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University.

• PrefaceIntroduction: The Problem of Mystical Experience in KantPart ISwedenborg’s Influence on Kant’s Critical AwakeningChapter 1 — The Copernican Hypothesis as the Key to Kant’s Awakening from Dogmatic SlumberChapter 2 — The Impact of Swedenborg’s Mysticism on Kant’s Metaphysical DreamsChapter 3 — Kant’s Awakening: The Copernican Hypothesis as the Key to Critical MysticismChapter 4 — Kant’s Metaphysical Dream: A System of Critical PhilosophyPart IIKant’s Critical Philosophy as a Critique of MysticismChapter 5 — Does Mystical Experience Always Prompt Delirium?Chapter 6 — Kant’s Critique of Delirious MysticismChapter 7 — Critical Mysticism as Immediate Experience of the MoralChapter 8 — Key Metaphors Guiding Kant’s Critical MysticismPart IIIThe Opus Postumum as an Experiment in Critical MysticismChapter 9 — Can the Original (Threefold) Synthesis Be Consciously Experienced?Chapter 10 — The Categorical Imperative as the Voice of GodChapter 11 — Matter’s Living Force

“Palmquist … is to be applauded for his willingness to challenge conventional accounts of the development of Kant’s Critical philosophy and broaden the scope of Kant interpretation in this and other works.” - J. Colin McQuillan, St. Mary’s University“Kant and Mysticism lucidly unfolds a significant alternative to the standard interpretations of Dreams [of a Spirit-Seer] and, more generally, mysticism in Kant’s philosophy. It is an eloquent and nuanced reading of the conceptual development of Kant’s Critical philosophy in its historical context and Kant’s thinking of problems of experience, intuition and the religious that will become an essential reference for future scholarship.” - Eric S. Nelson, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology“The whole book is a bold attempt to overturn and dismantle the standard interpretation (namely, that Kant is primarily an empirical philosopher, the all-destroyer of metaphysics and a reducer of religion to morality) and its frown on any form of mysticism in Kant whatsoever.” - Prof. Chris L. Firestone, Trinity International University